Dust Poets at Loplops, October 26

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DUST POETS

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Dust Poets bring new name, new album back to Sault fans

Same old band, pro- nounceable new name.

The Dust Poets are an acclaimed Manitoba-based roots quintet who have played the Sault several times in the past under their previous band name "das macht Show".

But the renamed acoustic group is bringing back its same cranky wit, soaring harmonies, and flashy polyester for local music fans with a show at Loplops Lounge on Thursday, October 26.

Loplops Lounge and Gallery, 9 p.m.
651 Queen St. East, Sault Ste Marie, Ontario
Tickets: $10
(705) 945-0754 or loplops.com for info

"We finally noticed that most people in Canada don't actually speak German anymore," deadpans songwriter and lead singer Murray Evans.

The band changed names only last fall, but has been touring folk festivals and clubs across Canada for the past five years.

Recent tours have taken them to the Maritimes and into the northeastern U.S.; the push into the U.S. market was another impetus for the name change.

"We figured that we wouldn't hassle our new American audiences with the obscure Beatles trivia and general inanity of a band name like 'das macht Show'," says Evans.

The Dust Poets formed in Brandon, Manitoba six years ago and since then most members have moved away, with three players in Toronto, one in New Brunswick, and Evans keeping the prairie ties alive back in Manitoba.

Nonetheless they seem undeterred by the geographic challenges and have been touring even more since the February release of their third album.

The edgy new CD is called Lovesick Town, a collection of ten originals that evoke twisted caricatures of small town life and big city delusion.

The musically restless Dust Poets have created arrangements that wander easily among styles, including gritty folk-rock, country- bluegrass, and soaring piano-pop.

Evans has crafted songs that use a dark and self-deprecating sense of humour to comment on the absurdity of modern life, as if the window that the Dust Poets use to view society is in fact a warped funhouse mirror pointed back at themselves. And the critics have been loving it.

The Toronto Star called the album "a little masterpiece" while Winnipeg's Uptown Magazine praises Lovesick Town for "impeccable songwriting and tremendous musicianship."

The influential Chicago webzine PopMatters names it "one of the year’s best surprises."

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